It was Team Abilene, though, that appeared to be most at home after day one.

A distant third-place finisher at last year's event, Abilene won seven of its eight partnership matches Saturday and tied the other to grab a four-point lead going into the final day of the Ryder Cup-style event. After Abilene at 71/2, Lubbock and San Angelo are tied at 31/2. Fort Worth won the remaining 11/2 points in Saturday's 16 matches.

"The course here and the conditions and the greens are very similar to what we play on, so I think that was to our advantage," Abilene PAGA president Ricky Martinez said.

Lubbock left the course Saturday just a tick behind where Gilbert Moreno, one of the team's captains, had intended to be.

"We were hoping to at least get a split," Moreno said. "We wanted to at least win four matches today to stay close to the leaders. But there's a lot of points up for grabs. We're not out of it  by no means."

PAGA promotes golf participation among minorities with more than 40 chapters nationwide. The third annual Quad City Shootout determines the best among the Lubbock, Abilene, San Angelo and Fort Worth chapters.

San Angelo won the 2000 traveling trophy, edging Lubbock 241/2 points to 21. Abilene wasn't much of a factor at 12.

The team Abilene brought in this time didn't change much  13 or 14 of its 16 players also were in last year's lineup, Martinez said.

"I knew they could play well," Martinez said. "In the past couple of years in this event, we never have. We've never played our game. This time around, everybody's a lot more relaxed and at ease."

Picking up points in the first and second flights kept Lubbock in contention. The teams of Reggie Garza-Chris Mojica and John M. DeLeon-Jesse Carrasco delivered first-flight victories. In the second flight, Michael Bentancourt and Roy Galaviz had the most lopsided win of the day, 6 and 5  six holes ahead with five to go  against Fort Worth's Dan Flores and Johnny Rodriguez.

It was good thing.

The home team's top two tandems both lost 2 and 1 in the championship flight. Lubbock's Juan Dominguez and Andy Weiland bowed to Martinez and J.R. Garcia, and Moreno and Sam Ortiz fell to Harvey Pulido and Ted Govea from Fort Worth.

"For these (opposing) guys to come out and do it to us on our own course against our big guns, they brought some pretty good players. That's pretty tough," Garza said.

Each player will compete head-to-head with each of the other three players in his group. With the front nine and the back nine counting for one point each, a player who wins both sides against each of his three competitors can rack up six points for the team.

That means Abilene's work still is far from done.

"You could have no points (the first day) and still win (on Sunday)," Moreno said. "It's happened before."

One of the most dramatic turning points of the day was in the championship-flight match that pitted Dominguez-Weiland against Martinez-Garcia. On the 16th green, Dominguez was above the hole from 50 feet, then rolled a birdie putt with perfect speed that stopped two inches beside the cup.

Immediately after, Martinez was below the hole from 25 feet, but ran in the long birdie putt to cinch the match.

"It was a sigh of relief," Martinez said.

Lubbock had better luck in the other flights. A couple of chip-ins from Garza, plus a 10-foot par putt from Garza on No. 14 and Mojica's 20-foot par putt on No. 16 helped them hold off a San Angelo team 2 and 1.

"We were fair  fair on putting," Mojica said.

Bentancourt and Galaviz had an easier time of it, going six-up through eight holes against Dan Flores and Johnny Rodriguez from Fort Worth.

"Right at the get-go, we jumped on them," Bentancourt said. "We were just worried about closing it out."